Channeling his inner Chesterton, the Jovial One asked what’s wrong with the world, and answered:

I am.

The Vatican’s ambassador to the US:

We must continually undergo conversion ourselves, so that our people … will have a renewed trust and confidence in us who are the messengers of the gospel. We must continually beg God to forgive those who out of human weakness have caused great pain to others.

Deal Hudson counseled dialing up the shouting:

Lay Catholics need to have a showdown with their bishops over exactly what they (the bishops) can say in an election cycle because they are not saying enough. This kind of nonsense has to stop.

7 Responses to Busy Bishops

The administrator of the Catholic Coptic Church in Egypt (subbing for the ailing Patriarch) has counseled the new Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church to focus on the spiritual and pastoral and leave politics to Coptic lay people. He should give the same advice to the Catholic bishops in the USA.

My brother, an Obama supporter, has managed to maintain cordial relations with many people from our childhood who are now racist Catholics. When they complained that his wife has stopped going to Mass he replied that she has grown weary of racist Catholics and Fox News loving priests and political bishops and their misogynist bishop.

I worked in Southie. The situation there was complex, with a gangster element calling themselves the “Marshals” coercing prejudiced behavior and encouraging violence, even stoking up kids about race and driving the stoked up juveniles to protests so the juveniles would commit violence while the Marshals sat in their cars. People had good reason to fear the Marshals; they would not hesitate to firebomb the house of anyone they designated as a “nigger-lover.” Nonetheless I, an outsider, worked quietly with a highly respected sports figure in the neighborhood to integrate the basketball league. No problems. Even the Marshals left us alone.

I had many fascinating and productive conversations with some of the Southie teens about race, especially interracial couples. I explained how well interracial marriages worked among my relatives in the UK, Ireland, France and the US, and that such marriages were common among middle-class Irish people (from Ireland). This was initially shocking to them since they called themselves Irish, meaning Irish-American for a few generations. They were fascinated wit my tales of life outside Southie. The well-chaperoned trip we took to Canada actually changed the lives of some of those teens.

The “busing crisis’ had many unfortunate aspects. one was forcing poor Boston neighborhoods to integrate while leaving the wealthy lily-white in-close suburbs to remain lily-white, thus stirring class resentment. One fortunate aspect was the court-ordered mandate to build new public grade schools to replace the crumbling buildings form the 1800s. The new school buildings, with excellent facilities (gyms, and in one case a great indoor swimming pool) were kept open at night for use by a legal entity separate from the Public Schools. This separate entity was the Community Schools Program. This program did great work in the neighborhood and helped to keep things calm by restoring a sense that each school was a “neighborhood school,” at least at night. Toronto also has a Community Schools Program. There it serves all neighborhoods, including the rich ones. In Boston it served only the poorer neighborhoods.

Your comment reminded me of an experience one of my sisters-in-law (a different one, who sill goes to church) had in segregated New Orleans many years ago when she a new mother married for about a year and living in that hotel on Jackson Square for about 6 months as my brother completed a special assignment there. A completely nonpolitical person and socially conservative, she went to the laundromat to do her first wash. The attendant, obviously annoyed, approached her and said, “Don’t you see those signs?” My sister-in-law responded, “Yes, I did, and I’m doing my white wash her in the Whites section and my colored wash in the Colored section. What’s the problem?” The attendant, a bit shocked, made it clear that the signs referred to race, and my sister-in-law, in all sincerity, responded along the lines of, “They told me New Orleans people have a great sense of humor. You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?” At some point she realized that the attendant was serious. At that point the sister-in-law let the attendant know that she was annoyed by such stupid segregation.

Then she went to Mass in the cathedral (my brother staying with the baby until she got back) and took a seat in the back pew, kneeling in silent prayer with her eyes closed. She heard someone making a sound in her direction, and then a she got a tap on her shoulder. It was the usher, urging her to go up front. She politely declined but the usher insisted. She would not move. Finally he was forced to explain that the back of the church was for blacks only. In a very very loud voice she exclaimed, “In church? You do this in church? What’s wrong with you? God does not discriminate. I am not moving.” The usher left, as everyone looked back on the scene. From then on she and my brother always sat in the back pew, dismissed, I am sure, as uppity Yankees.